Book Description
Finding Mañana is a vibrant, moving memoir of one family's life in Cuba and their wrenching departure. Mirta Ojito was born in Havana and raised there until the unprecedented events of the Mariel boatlift brought her to Miami, one teenager among more than a hundred thousand fellow refugees. Now a reporter for The New York Times, Ojito goes back to reckon with her past and to find the people who set this exodus in motion and brought her to her new home. She tells their stories and hers in superb and poignant detail-chronicling both individual lives and a major historical event.
Growing up, Ojito was eager to excel and fit in, but her parents'-and eventually her own-incomplete devotion to the revolution held her back. As a schoolgirl, she yearned to join Castro's Young Pioneers, but as a teenager in the 1970s, when she understood the darker side of the Cuban revolution and learned more about life in el norte from relatives living abroad, she began to wonder if she and her parents would be safer and happier elsewhere. By the time Castro announced that he was opening Cuba's borders for those who wanted to leave, she was ready to go; her parents were more than ready: They had been waiting for this opportunity since they married, twenty years before.
Finding Mañana gives us Ojito's own story, with all of the determination and intelligence-and the will to confront darkness-that carried her through the boatlift and made her a prizewinning journalist. Putting her reporting skills to work on the events closest to her heart, she finds the boatlift's key players twenty-five years later, from the exiles who negotiated with Castro to the Vietnam vet on whose boat, Mañana, she finally crossed the treacherous Florida Strait. Finding Mañana is the engrossing and enduring story of a family caught in the midst of the tumultuous politics of the twentieth century.
On the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Mariel boatlift, a Pulitzer Prize winner's extraordinary memoir of her childhood in Cuba and her historic journey to America
Customer Reviews:
A well written book unlike other Cuban exile books.......2006-10-06
This book does a great job of weaving the story of Mirta Ojito and her family with events in Cuba as they unfolded in the years before after the 1979-80 Mariel boat lift. Mirta Ojito is a gifted writer. She manages to find humor in the many absurdities of what still constitutes life in communist Cuba.
Manana: Found.......2006-06-01
In "Finding Manana," author Mirta Ojito is literally looking for "Manana," a boat that brought her and her family to Key West during the 1980 Mariel boatlift. But she's also looking for answers that will help her come to terms with yesterday and the political catalysts that led to one of the biggest mass migrations in US and Cuban histories.
What began as a memoir, telling those experiences from the power of memory from her childhood in Cuba, unraveled into a larger story of how Mariel played out and its effect today on Cubans like her in Miami.
The book seesaws between the personal story and the political and historic one.
Ojito's personal stories of growing up in Cuba and the profiles of other Cubans looking to leave their country "shaped like an alligator at rest" (p. 196) engage the reader the best. But the authoritative tone she alternates into for the layered factual and historic details tend to slow "Manana" down to a few knots.
For five months in 1980, Fidel Castrol unleashed 125,000 refugees from the port of Mariel to South Florida. It's these same people President Jimmy Carter took in like orphans looking to be adopted.
At 16, Ojito was a Marielita, a term that today still conjures up images of Cuban's most dangerous and mentally ill criminals, people "with glazed eyes, shaved heads and what appeared to be prison garb,'' (p. 211) seen as they came upon Florida's shores.
Through her narratives, Ojito shows there were more to Marielitos than the image of them projected in the media or in the movie "Scarface." They were hard-working families looking to escape Fidel Castro's regime for a better future in the US.
"To me, it was a badge of honor,'' she writes (p. 266). "a recognition that I belonged to a group of people who had once left their country as ballast and had managed to stay afloat, and even attain a measure of success.''
Ojito, for one, mastered English once in South Florida, became a reporter with The Miami Herald and later, The New York Times where she shared the 2000 Pulitzer prize for national reporting.
Using her lens as a journalist as well as the power of her memories of Cuba as her guide, she traces the boatlift to the men who orchestrated it and how their sometimes overlapping roles ushered this moment in both countries' histories.
Ojito also chronicles in detail their backstories, which humanizes them. Ojito sketches people like Hector Sanyustiz, the Cuban bus driver who barreled through the gates of the Peruvian embassy, which opened the floodgates for 10,000 Cubans seeking political asylum on its property.
She chronicles the clandestine dialogue with Bernando Benes, the Miami banker with ties to President Carter and who (meaning Benes) later held secret meetings with Castro to bring 3,000 political prisoners to the US.
And then there's captain Mike Howell, the Vietnam veteran who lost his arm in the war and began chartering his boat from New Orleans. The book picks up steam here as Ojito builds up to the actual boatlift.
Howell was moved by the story of passionate Cubans looking to pick up their relatives in Mariel that he agreed to bring them to Key West with help from his boat, the "Manana," which translates as "Tomorrow" in English. Ojito paints him as her personal hero.
"The man and the women in front of him seemed determined to go,'' Ojito writes of the group of Cubans who asked Howell's help in New Orleans. "Saving people was part of the Manana's mission, and Mike relished the idea of playing savior."
Yet for all the build-up to the actual journey from Mariel to Key West, there are only a handful of pages of the trip itself.
In "Finding Manana," Ojito doesn't just find the ship that bears its name. She also finds the real story of Mariel for herself and other fellow Marielitos.
from cuba to another place.......2006-01-08
The author details her life and the lives of others who have left Cuba and what they gained and lost in the transition. A well written book, even paced with good photographs.
Breathtaking.......2005-12-10
I'm a Marielito and many of the experiences Ms. Ojito describes are similar to mine. That's what makes it authentic to me. The book itself is well researched, well developed and well written. It properly contextualizes the event. Those looking for a rabid denunciation of Mr. Castro should look somewhere else. Ms. Ojito, like me, doesn't care so much about Castro as to be obsessed with him.
Finding Manana Review.......2005-09-07
If you like to know more about Cuban life during Castro's beginning of his dictatorship, and the feelings and how people reacted, this book is good for you. This novel Finding Manana by Mirta Ojito is about a girl who is growing up in a communist Cuba when Castro had just took over and how her family escaped.
The book Finding Manana is a memoir about a girl growing up in a communist Cuba and when she escaped and lived in the United States. It is also of how she got out of Cuba and all the trouble her and her family went through to get out of Cuba.
"The Valley Chief's has broken down and there is no way to get out of Cuba's port". Mirta Ojito and her family have come to an obstacle when trying to get out of Cuba's port to get to the United States.
If you know a lot about Cuba's history and how Castro got into power and all that he went through to get into power. If you really like Cuba's history this is the book for you.
Book Description
“New York Times reporter Mirta Ojito melds the personal with the political in a moving account of her familyÂ's departure from Cuba.” —People
In this unforgettable memoir, Pulitzer PrizeÂ-winning journalist Mirta Ojito travels back twenty-five years to the event that brought her and 125,000 of her fellow Cubans to America: the 1980 mass exodus known as the Mariel boatlift. As she tracks down the long-forgotten individuals whose singular actions that year profoundly affected thousands on both sides of the Florida straits, she offers a mesmerizing glimpse behind CubaÂ's iron curtain—and recalls the reality of being a sixteen-year-old torn between her familyÂ's thirst for freedom and a revolution that demanded absolute loyalty. Recounting an immensely important chapter in the ever-evolving relationship between America and its neighbor to the south, Finding Mañana is a major triumph by one of our finest journalists.
“In this wonderful memoir, Ojito ransoms herself from the seductions of nostalgia and reclaims instead the beleageured Cuba of her childhood.”
—The New York Times
Customer Reviews:
I loved this book!.......2006-08-29
Finding Manana was one of the best books I've ever read! Written by a New York Times journalist, Finding Manana is very well written. Sixteen when she and her family left Cuba for Miami during the 1980 Mariel boatlift, Mirta Ojito provides fascinating insight into what life was like growing up in a counter-revolutionary family in 1970s Cuba. The writer has an superb eye for detail. For anyone interested in Cuban history and the 1980 Mariel boatlift, this book is a must!
Finding Manana.......2006-08-25
I chose to read Finding Manana: A memoir of a Cuban Exodus. My father fled communist Cuba and its history has always fascinated me. I enjoyed every page of this book and it was hard for me to put it down because I loved the author's natural style and interesting topics. Although I have a special interest in Cuban history, I believe that anyone who enjoys reading historical non-fiction, would find this novel to be interesting. Finding Manana is a touching story about a young girl trying to find her identity where it is most difficult; in a communist country.
In this bold memoir, Mirta Ojito describes her family's life as gusanos, or worms, in Cuba. This was a term used by the Cuban government to categorize political dissenters. Ojito describes the embarrassing and harsh abuse people who did not support Castro received and illustrates why so many Cubans wanted to leave their country. In great detail, Ojito recalls the day of Castro's speech which all of Havana was expected to attend. Since her family did not believe in Castro's ways and did not support him, they skipped the rally and hid in their apartment for the night. The next morning, when they walked outside they found eggs that had been thrown at their apartment and neighbors yelling hateful words. Through Ojito's personal stories like that, it is easier to understand why so many Cubans left the country they loved so much.
Ojito not only shares her personal story of how she escaped communist Cuba, but she also tells stories of others trying to get out and those attempting to aid them. One story she writes about is that of Hector Sanyustiz, a bus driver so determined to leave Cuba he drove his bus into the gates of the Peruvian Embassy in Havana in hopes of receiving immunity. Soon after Sanyustiz's stunt, over 10,000 people sought asylum in that same Embassy. Ojito writes through many different points of view from the starving people who refuse to move, scared that the Cuban police will trick them out of the Embassy and place them in jail, to the Cuban political figures that work with Castro and try to figure out what to do with all those desperate to leave the country. Another person Ojito discusses is Captain Mike Howell, one of the generous Americans helping to bring back Cuban refugees on his ship. Through this character, Ojito shows how those who have never had to live without freedom often take it for granted. This novel is very humbling for those who believe life in America is difficult or unfair.
Ojito's style is very natural and although she is a reporter, she has the talent of being able to get facts across without being tedious. In Ojito's stories, she educates the reader as well as keeps him entertained and interested. She is able to blend her reporter style with her emotional style in this story making a perfect balance between knowledge and experience. This novel explains many things about communist Cuba and its society many would not know unless they lived through it.
Book Description
The Landser, German soldiers in World War II, were feared for the efficiency and ruthlessness in battle. In his book Frontsoldaten, Stephen G. Fritz mines the letters, diaries, memoirs, and oral histories of these men to create the definitive account of soldiers' lives on the front lines. Frontsoldaten addresses the training, images of combat, living conditions, combat stress, bonds of comradeship, ideology, and motivation of the Landser.
Frontsoldaten reveals the war through the eyes of these self-styled "little men" with a sense of immediacy and intimacy. Fritz contrasts these German soldiers with their American counterparts, showing how much soldiers everywhere have in common. But he also discusses significant differences in ideological intensity, group cohesiveness, ingenuity, discipline, and quality of equipment that will come as a suprise to many readers familiar with the history of World War II.
Customer Reviews:
A good starting point.......2007-08-31
It depicts the daily life of the ordinary gernan soldier in the midst of something tremendous as World War II was, combining different sources of information to show the environment in wich the German war machinery was developed, and how it went so far. It is a very good starting point to whom is interested in this kind of literature. After reading "Frontsoldaten" I felt the need for reading other books of WWII that I knew in this one.
Besides, you'll read letters from real soldiers that could never tell their experiences since they have perished in the war. Now, they live on through this book. I read it three times, and I would read it again. Thanks Mr. Fritz
Frontsoldaten: The German Soldier in World War II.......2006-08-02
Great informative WW2 book that gives a personal view of WW2 from the front line soldiers of the German Army rather than the top commanders, generals, and political leaders. Not to say these people don't have anything important to say but you get a very different view of the war when you hear what the people who are actually doing the fighting have to say.
Even in print, war is hell.......2006-05-07
One thing's for sure, if it's one genre that's everywhere on the book market it's books about war in general and the Second World War in particular. From time to time new books arrive about certain important battles, or Allied or Nazi characters. Which is fine, obviously, war history is just as important as any other history, sometimes even more important, but many of these books forget to focus on the men who did all the real fighting: the soldiers themselves.
But alas, that has changed now. Frontsoldaten, which tells the stories of the Landsers (the German term for the common infantryman), focuses on the ordinary soldier. And the result is nothing but amazing.
Why? Because the book is almost exclusively based on letters, diaries, and other written sources created by the soldiers themselves when they were stationed out in the field, and these sources describe the war in all its gory details. For someone like me, who has never done military service or experienced war first-hand it's hard, impossible even, to understand what it really means to be a soldier, but by reading Frontsoldaten I imagine I at least got some sort of feel for it. Some parts that describe the gruelling battle scenes are bloodier than the bloodiest of horror movies, and even though I knew it was all true I still had difficulties comprehending the fact that it actually happened.
But it did. It's often a heavy read - since it tells it like it was without any romanticizing whatsoever - but you just have to endure, since the book is just as necessary as it is demanding. But more than anything else it's interesting. The Wehrmacht (German army) became known as a highly disciplined and efficient army, and Frontsoldaten will tell you why. The reader is taken to the camps where the soldiers were trained, to the insane front line in the East, to post-war Germany where the survivors tried to return to a normal life, and much more.
And everything is just as interesting. Many people have only experience the Second World War through black and white pictures and film where there's not a single drop of blood and where the war actually appears to be quite cosy and fun. Well, that's not really how it was, and if you read Frontsoldaten - and I really hope you do - you'll understand why.
Hopefully a Swedish publisher will decide to publish a translation edition of this book so even more people will be able to read it.
If I was the Swedish Minister for Schools I'd make Frontsoldaten mandatory reading.
Better sources exist.......2006-01-13
Although well-researched, this book is really little more than a book of quotations lifted from several primary sources. The result is rather monotonous and fails to provide the detail and context that makes those primary sources so informative. A much better idea is to simply read the memoirs written by the men who were actually there (and there are plenty of them). They provide much greater insight into the life of a German Landser than this second-hand account.
The book of quotes.......2005-10-15
Imagine writing a book by simply stringing quotes and references together with your literary contribution limited to connecting verbs and you have this book in a nutshell!
Maybe I would have liked it if the author had titled it, Frontsoldaten: The book of quotes.
Book Description
The unholy alliances that have placed America in the hands of a messianic Christian elite.
For four years, Americans have lived under an administration that holds twice-weekly Bible classes in the White House and daily prayer meetings at the Department of Justice. The Christian right is no stranger to Washington's corridors of power. But a combination of a born-again president, a burgeoning family-values movement, and the canny political strategies of Karl Rove has delivered unprecedented influence to today's Christian fundamentalists.
As Esther Kaplan shows in this fast-paced investigation, no condom fact sheet or obscure drug advisory panel is too small to escape the roving eyes of Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, Concerned Women for America, or the many other political advocacy arms of the evangelical right. While organizations that promote family planning and sex education are the targets of relentless audits, church groups receive hundreds of millions in federal dollars for programs promoting sexual abstinence and marriage training, especially for the poor. Religious considerations even shape the government's foreign aid policies and its war on terror. And while much of the Christian right's influence could be quickly reversed with a change in administration, Bush's crusading makeover of the federal courts will undermine women's and gay rights —and bolster a corporate agenda —for decades to come.
- Under pressure from Christian fundamentalists, the National Park Service has approved the display and sale of a creationist book that claims the Grand Canyon was formed by the flood that launched Noah's ark.
- To sell his faith-based initiative to Christian conservatives, President Bush allowed religious groups receiving federal funds to legally refuse to hire Jews, gays, unmarried mothers, or anyone who fails to meet their moral code.
- The administration has collaborated with states it considers sponsors of terror, such as Libya and Iran, to forward an anti-abortion agenda at the UN. Meanwhile, doctors sent to restore social services in Iraq were vetted to make sure they were anti-abortion.
Customer Reviews:
Should religion get involved in politics?.......2006-11-06
Religion and politics have been uneasy bedfellows for some time now, and with the current administration's faith-based initiatives, policies, and presidential stem-cell research vetoes, it appears that Americans are wanting something a little more secular in their legislature. Esther Kaplan writes with a very liberal bent and addresses many issues, including the neverending evolution/creationism controversy; stem cell research; the president's response to the global AIDS crisis; and abortion. What most secular humanists will shudder at is the revelation that George genuinely, sincerely believes that God called on him to run for president. Whether or not religion ultimately falls completely out of favor with the American public is yet to be seen. For liberals, this book is a chilling call to arms.
Compelling and frightening.......2006-08-25
This book should be a real wake-up call to people who think freedom is a core idea in our country. The author has done an extraordinary job of pulling together evidence of the Right's insidious agenda and frightening. This is one of those books that you almost wish you hadn't read--because now you feel compelled to do something about it.
Islamofascists don't corner the market on lunacy!.......2006-05-17
Once DefCon (The Campaign to Defend the Constitution) announced that they'd kick off their new book club in March 2006 with Esther Kaplan's WITH GOD ON THEIR SIDE: HOW CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALISTS TRAMPLED SCIENCE, POLICY AND DEMOCRACY IN GEORGE W. BUSH'S WHITE HOUSE, I checked out a copy from my local library, post-haste. Unfortunately, I never did finish it in time for the online chat with author Kaplan, but not because it was a boring, tedious read; in fact, just the opposite. I was so shocked, outraged, and just plain pissed off about what I learned in WITH GOD ON THEIR SIDE that I found myself throwing the book down every third page so I could rant to anyone within earshot about GW and his Bible-beating cronies. I mean, I knew that the current administration let their evangelical faith guide their policies; I guess I just didn't realize how far their zealousness had taken them.
Kaplan focuses on several areas in which GW shapes government policy and programs to fit his conservative Christian worldview to an egregious extent: foreign policy (specifically, the "War on Terror" and the conflict in Iraq), science (including stem cell research and any science surrounding sexual matters, such as AIDS and condom effectiveness), faith-based initiatives, gay marriage, and reproductive rights (with an emphasis on contraception, abstinence-only programs, and abortion). Kaplan discusses the impact of Bush's policies both in the United States and abroad (for example, the Global Gag Rule has had a deleterious effect on women in developing nations). The issues are complex, the violations many, yet Kaplan does an excellent job of nailing down the significance of each and showing how they are all interrelated.
Perhaps more interesting than George W. Bush's faith-based politics is his stubbornness, his dogged determination to "stay the course," his unrelenting single-mindedness and his intolerance for inconvenient "facts" (like Stephen Colbert, I believe GW prefers "truthiness" to "book learning"). He is "the decider," and as such, his words are gospel. Should any of his staff or government employees (or any recipients of government largesse) disagree with him, they had better shape up or be prepared to ship out. Kaplan serves up example after example of GW's disdain for dissent. Scientists who pursue controversial research or publish data at odds with the Bush admin's ideology are selectively audited, driven out of office, or have their grant money yanked out from under them. Staffers and cabinet members who dare disagree with Bush in public must renounce their blasphemous ways or risk being thrown overboard to satisfy the conservative sharks that make up GW's base. More so than any president before him, George W. has consistently stifled science, censored his critics, and generally abused his position of power.
WITH GOD ON THEIR SIDE was first published in early 2004, prior to the 2004 Presidential Elections. Although Kaplan is clearly disgusted with the "trampling" of "science, policy, and democracy" that she so eloquently describes, she still manages to maintain a somewhat optimistic tone - perhaps because she hopes that the good citizens of the US will vote this schmoe out of office when given the chance. Unfortunately, we all know what happened in 2004. I can't help but wonder if GW would have been defeated if more voters (and potential voters) had read WITH GOD ON THEIR SIDE before making their dates with the Diebold machines. Like his evangelical base, Bush is a master at concealing his true goals, as well as the unconstitutional activities he uses to pursue them.
I should also note that Kaplan documents her sources exhaustively. Nothing annoys me more than an investigative piece of nonfiction with a sloppy reference list tacked on as an afterthought (or, heavens forbid, such a book that's completely devoid of any references at all!). Kaplan's "Notes" section weighs in at a healthy 35 pages, making it easy for skeptics to track down her resources and verify her claims. (Yes, it's all true, and it's every bit as scary as it seems!) And, while Kaplan may take issue with Bush's flouting of the wall of separation between church and state, she is herself religious - Jewish, to be exact. She's not anti-religion or an atheist (like moi), but rather opposes Bush's evangelical antics because they're an affront to the First Amendment and are more often than not counter-productive in terms of science, foreign policy, human rights, and democracy.
In the words of one reviewer, WITH GOD ON THEIR SIDE is "a truly shocking dossier of recent religious fundamentalist incursions into the soul of American democracy." Every American must read this book - and keep Kaplan's lessons in mind as they head to the polls this fall.
- Kelly Garbato
Bowing to ther Religious Right.......2006-02-10
Perhaps the best quote ever to describe the Bush administration came from George W. Bush's original pick for Faith Czar, John DiIulio, who said, "What you've got is everything - and I mean everything - being run by the political arm" The Bush administration has wrote the book on abusing Democracy and circumventing checks and balances. Rather than worry about governance the Bush Admin runs a 24/7, year in year out campaign to appease its base, satisfy the lobbyists and find wedge issues to lure new constituencies. One of the most disgusting incidents of pandering was the reinstatment of the "Mexico City Policy" which forbid any foreign organization from receiving U.S. dollars if they so much as mention anything concerning abortion even if it's done with their own money. It wasn't so much the reinstatement that was foul it was Bush's ignorance of the policy itself as Esther Kaplan wrote, "It seemed that President Bush, in an effort to offer a `symbolic gesture' to his domestic political supporters, had casually imposed an international policy he hadn't bothered to read - one that would have profound effects on women around the globe"
This is essentially everything that's wrong with the Bush presidency. He just doesn't appear to care. It doesn't matter that "six years after Texas mandated abstinence, teen pregnancy rates were one and a half times the nation average" It doesn't matter that discouraging the use of condoms has led to a rise in STD's and in countries like Romania an increase in unwanted pregnancies and YES an increase in abortions. John DiIulio made the mistake of believing that the efficacy of Bush's faith based programs was important. It isn't. Results are irrelevant. Satisfying the base and maintaining ideological purity is the ONLY important thing. Every day government health and science experts are replaced by political hacks. What happened with Michael Brown and hurricane Katrina was only one high profile example of Bush placing totally unqualified supporters into important government positions. Rather than show contrition over the debacle he almost immediately nominated the embarrassing Harriett Miers to the Supreme Court.
The author points out that George W. Bush saw himself as a man of destiny even before he was elected as he was quoted telling televangelist James Robison, "I feel like God wants me to run for president. I can't explain it, but I sense my country is going to need me" The fact that he won despite losing the popular vote only increased his belief that his position as president was a divine appointment. It's no wonder that Bush has so little patience for dissenting opinion when his efforts are guided by God. On the Iraq war the author writes, "Each scrap of intelligence that supported invasion would have leaped from the page, an affirmation of God's will, while any intelligence that refuted such a necessity would have been received with suspicion" This pattern of infallibility is likely behind Bush's constant appointment of unqualified candidates often done by making an end run around Congress. Candidates are appointed to reflect Bush's godly worldview.
"With God on Their Side" focuses on the appointments of conservative evangelicals to policy making decisions particularly in the areas of health care, science and foreign policy making. (For a more detailed view on the science portion read `The Republican War on Science' by Chris Mooney) Political ideologues have been inserted while experienced professionals are pushed out the door to the detriment of everyone. The `Left Behind' book series by Tim LeHaye casts the United Nations as the villain in Satan's plan. Unfortunately many Evangelicals take the fictional series seriously and thanks to their influence in government the United States has been sending more than a few anti-UN representatives to the UN. The U.S. has been pushing for abortion and contraceptive rules overseas that are far more restrictive than anything in the United States, so restrictive in fact that the United States was forced to create alliances that "included nations suspected of supporting or harboring terrorist operations, such as Sudan, Syria, and Libya, along with `axis of evil' member Iran" In trying to strong arm Asian countries "not a single Asian country backed the extreme U.S. stance, even nations with conservative abortion laws such as the Philippines and Iran" Yes, the United States is sometimes too restrictive even for Iran.
This book is a must read for those who have any concern over the direction the United States is headed in. The author writes, "The Christian right movement, as a whole, is not enamored of democracy" and this would apply to tradition conservativism as a whole (just read The Conservative Mind by Russell Kirk to see a 600 page attack on Democracy). On the Republican tactics Kaplan writes, "The goal is not to engage your opponents in the public square, but to kneecap them or send them into exile" The goal is to entrench Conservativism through the courts and in public funding to the point where Republican's will own policy long after Bush's term is over. "With God on their Side" isn't a short book but it's packed with plenty of info to send a shiver down the spine of anyone who believes that an American theocracy is a path we seriously need to avoid.
Read it anyway.......2006-02-01
Kaplan brings up serious points, presenting them in a thought-provoking manner. The downside is that no one will be reconsidering what they already believe on the part of the book. The cover, the title, and the better part of the material won't challenge the other side to rethink positions. While the analysis may be good, it's difficult for casual readers. With no shortage of material it's easily mistaken for a diatribe.
Still, Kaplan provides interesting material, such as one analysis on the President's first year comments on stem-cell research:
"I...believe that human life is a sacred gift from our Creator. I worry about a culture that devalues life, and believe as your President I have an important obligation to foster and encourage respect for life in America and throughout the world."
Kaplan recounts speechwriter David Frum calling this a masterstroke. In response to these words, Bush's image expanded even though in this case embryos were not being sacrificed at all. Kaplan calls this invented science.
The charge that there is 'a culture that devalues life' is stunning in itself. Assuming the implication were true, how is it that one disaster now seems to follow another - from 9-11, to Iraq, to Katrina - all causing tremendous loss of life. We haven't seen losses like these in many years. It becomes painfully apparent that humans aren't as vulnerable to weak values as they are to weak minds.
Book Description
What is it really like to be a dog? Do animals experience emotions like pleasure, joy, and grief? Marc Bekoff's work draws world-wide attention for its originality and its probing into what animals think about and know as well as what they feel, what physical and mental skills they use to live successfully within their social community. Bekoff's work, whether addressed to scientists or the general public, demonstrates that investigations into animal thought, emotions, self-awareness, behavioral ecology, and conservation biology can be compassionate as well as scientifically rigorous.
In Animal Passions and Beastly Virtues, Bekoff brings together essays on his own ground-breaking research and on what scientists know about the remarkable range and flexibility of animal behavior. His fascinating and often amusing observations of dogs, wolves, coyotes, prairie dogs, elephants, and other animals playing, leaving and detecting scent-marks ("yellow snow"), solving problems, and forming friendships challenge the idea that science and the ethical treatment of animals are incompatible.
Books:
- Flying the Alaska Wild: The Adventures and Misadventures of an Alaska Bush Pilot
- Fundamentals of Organizational Communication (6th Edition)
- God is My Co-Pilot
- Great Souls: Six Who Changed the Century
- Halfway Home : My Life 'til Now
- Hell's Angels: Three Can Keep a Secret If Two Are Dead'
- Herding Cats: A Life in Politics
- His Bright Light: The Story of Nick Traina
- Hitler: 1889-1936 Hubris
- HO CHI MINH: A LIFE
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- A First Course in General Relativity
- The Way to Glory
- The Art of the Steal: Inside the Sotheby's-Christie's Auction House Scandal
- The Karoo: Ecological Patterns and Processes
- The World Is Flat
- The IACUC Handbook, Second Edition
- Tolkien and C.S. Lewis: The Gift of Friendship
- Has Modernism Failed
- The Pantanal: Brazil's Forgotten Wilderness
- Encyclopedia of Australian Plants: Volume 8
Rediscovering Cuba: A Personal Memoir
Es Cuba: Life and Love on an Illegal Island
Cuba Diaries: An American Housewife in Havana
Havana Dreams: A Story of a Cuban Family
Dancing with Cuba: A Memoir of the Revolution
General
| Ethnic & National
| Biographies & Memoirs
| Subjects
| Books
